


Breathe

by Miishae



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Inspiration, Writer's Block, freewrite - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 04:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12623432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miishae/pseuds/Miishae
Summary: Something I wrote for myself, but in a second-person format, mostly because I like the style.





	Breathe

You want to write.

It’s hard to think of _something_ to write, because sometimes it’s just hard. You have all this inspiration and a lot of ideas, and sometimes you really want to participate in NaNoWriMo, so you sit down at your computer or laptop and you open up a word document, excited and eager to put your thoughts to words.

But nothing comes out.

Your mind is quite literally a blank. All that inspiration you had moments ago is suddenly _gone_ , as if the very act of opening up said word document took all the energy out of you, leaving you feeling almost empty, sad, in a way. It’s not really your fault. You have the drive, you KNOW you have the drive. You had -and still have- every bit of motivation to actually write, but for some reason, the words never come.

That romantic pairing you wanted to write a ship over? It’s still there. But you can’t figure out how to start your story. You don’t know if you want to start off in the beginning, and if you _do_ , how far back to you want to start? Do you want to go years back, to childhood friends? Do you want to start at the ending and work your way backwards? It’s _there_ , it’s all in your head, and it’d be so PERFECT.

But your fingers hover over the keys, and all you can do is stare down. Suddenly, the task seems too daunting. You stare at each individual letter, and it’s like they’re growing in size, taking over your vision until you feel a source of loss pooling into your stomach. That feeling only grows and grows and you rage-type in frustration, until the only progress you’ve made so far is just two rows of keyboard smash and you end up backspacing anyway.

What if reading other stories help? Maybe if you turn to fanfiction websites, you’ll be inspired and will be able to take mental notes from others. You go to AO3 and type in a few tags that you want to search by.

You start off easy enough, looking at a few cute fluff stories in general, but then you find a rabbit hole, and things keep spiraling out of control. You can’t stop looking at titles and summaries, or reading other tags and trying to figure out the story and **it’s all so confusing and how are they all better writers than you anyway this isn’t fair ---**

**BREATHE.**

Just breathe.

So you can’t write _at this moment_. There’s nothing wrong with that. Are you still breathing? Take another deep breathe. Remember that cute story you read a few minutes ago? The one about your favorite pairing? Good, remember that story. Go back and read it again, okay?  
Good.

You can write like that. You know you’re able to write like that. It’s okay that you can’t figure it out now. You still have the motivation, the drive, the _want_ to write. What you want doesn’t even have to be fanfiction. It can be an original story. Maybe you want to write something involving yourself.

You pull up the word document again. Still breathing. Still calming down. Your fingers are hovering over the keys again, but your vision is no longer fading in and out with growing anxiety. This time, putting words on the blank document isn’t such a daunting task. You feel better, and maybe you even allow a small smile on your face.

This time, you know what you want to do. Maybe you only have inspiration for five minutes, maybe you could type for hours. It really doesn’t even matter, since the sound of the keyboard is all you’re really paying attention to, if even that. Everything around you is merely background noise as you finally put your thoughts to words. Not quite tangible, but no longer just a vague daydream.

You have a cohesive story. It’s not perfect, but who starts off that way?

And really, what even is perfection anyway?

Breathe. Write. You’ve got it.


End file.
